Berlin 2007 - Day 8: Homeward Bound
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04/05/2007:
By morning we were all feeling a little bit better. Not 100%, but at least well enough that we weren’t going to be getting sick on the plane ride home!
I forgot to recount 2 humorous stories of yesterday:
The first is that X bought me a giant Kinder Egg. For those not in the know, Kinder Egg is a candy sold by Ferrero, the diabolical geniuses that began with the invention of Nutella and have also brought us Tic Tacs, and Rocher. Kinder Eggs consist of a hollow chocolate egg that is made up of two thin layers, one milk chocolate, one white chocolate. Inside the egg is a plastic capsule and inside the plastic capsule is a toy. They aren’t super special but they are cute and have a lot of novelty in that, predictably, they are not actually legal in the US. I always thought that this was because it was an obvious lawsuit in waiting, but apparently the original mandate for the FDA in the 1930s actually forbade embedding toys in food from the get-go. I like to pick some up anytime I’m in a country where they are available.
X picked this up as sort of a “get well” present and I was very grateful, although I had to poke fun that she had got me an egg for girls. She protested that it wasn’t her fault - the label is in German! Look closely at the label and you will see why I got a good laugh at this. It’s basically your normal Kinder Egg only it’s much larger.
Fortunately the toy inside doesn’t seem particularly gender-specific. It consists of a bunch of plastic ants and a plastic honeypot that you stack up.
Clicking this link will take you to the Kinder Egg album.
The second story is that at some point during the evening our landlord stopped down to return our security deposit. Mike and I, already not good at math spent an absurd amount of time passing Euro banknotes back and forth to each other but could not figure out a way to make it balance out. Mary was getting quite a laugh listening to us go back and forth unable to make any progress.
OK so our flight home was fairly early. We were already packed so we really just had to clear out and pick up a bus to the airport which was very close to the apartment. We walked out to the bus stop and waited. And waited. And waited. While we waited we discussed the bus schedule and why we hadn’t seen a single bus. Maybe we were just outside of peak hours. Maybe we just missed the last bus. Suddenly it occurred to me - it was Good Friday, which I had heard was a widely observed holiday. Maybe there is very limited public transit on Good Friday!
No sooner than I got these words out did a taxi cab approach us on the opposite side of the street. And not just any taxi cab - a big van. Big enough for all of us. Mary used her elite NYC skills to quickly flag him down. I was concerned he wouldn’t stop since he had to turn around to get to us, but he swung right around and picked us up. A few minutes later we were checking in at the airport.
Tegel airport seems pretty tiny. A long narrow hallway with all the check-in counters and another long narrow hallway divided up to form the gate waiting areas. We had to loaf around in the first long narrow hallway waiting for the security people to arrive and clear us. When they did, they flagged me to look through my backpack. My backpack is a combination camera bag/backpack (a review on this later) and so the lower portion contained the camera and the upper portion contained solely the giant Kinder Egg. I have no idea if the Kinder Egg looked suspicious on the X-ray display or if it was just a random check, but the woman doing the inspection seemed quite amused to find that my backpack pretty much contained nothing but a giant Kinder Egg.
The flight home was fairly uneventful. There were no Scary German Guys.
Back in the airport, we got a good taste of Department of Homeland Security dog-and-pony show. Maybe not specifically DHS but it at least illustrates some of the stupid things we do. As most travellers know, luggage is sent to a baggage claim where each traveller is responsible for finding his/her own bags and double-checking to make sure they aren’t mistakenly taking someone else’s. This isn’t a bad system. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than this.
After we collected all of our bags, we found that one of Mary’s was missing. She found the people to talk to and after a little while was notified that someone had picked up her bag and when they presented it to check in for their connecting flight it was caught since the destination tag indicated it was staying in Newark! They told Mary where to go to get her bag and then asked her to provide ID to claim it. This seems somewhat silly considering anyone can steal anyone’s bag from the baggage claim, but whatever - it’s just lucky that these people had another flight, otherwise they probably would not have noticed they had the wrong bag until they got home and opened it!
We considered making a stop at Harold’s on the way home, but after the previous days’ illness and wanting to just get home and unwind we decided to just skip that and head straight home.
It was a great trip, and Berlin is an awesome city. I think I may like it even better than London, and the fact that it is a LOT cheaper than London makes it all the more appealing.
To see all of the pics from the trip, head on over to the Gallery!
Tags: Berlin